“What about money?” he said between bites. “Can you get us any money?”
“No, I’m sorry, baby, no. I can’t ask them, I just can’t. But I don’t care about their money. Fuck their money.”
“We don’t have enough for the airplane tickets.”
“Sell the car.”
“It won’t be enough; the car’s a piece of shit. It’s my piece of shit, and I love it, but it’s still a piece of shit.”
“Then we’ll drive down to Mexico and make our own money. You don’t have to do that drug mule shit you were doing in Philadelphia. I’ll waitress or something. You’ll sing in a café. We’ll make do. We don’t need much down there. And we’ll be free. Don’t you want to be free?”
“Yeah, sure, of course I do,” he said.
“The beaches, the street food. That corn with the cheese and spice you like so much. And if we get bored we could keep going south. Belize, Colombia, Peru.”
“Machu Picchu,” said Frank, his eyes widening. “I always wanted to do Machu Picchu.”
“We’ll get clean down there, both of us, I’ll make sure of it. I’ll make it all up to you, baby. We’ll make it happen. Real freedom. All we have to do is get out of here, now. Get away from them. What do you say?”
What would he say? What do you think he would say? The siren call of freedom and adventure rocked like Johnny Rotten in his skull.
He could see the destinations flash like someone else’s Instagram feed in his consciousness, the kind of feed that turned you bitter with envy: striding down the sordid streets of Juarez, making love on a pristine beach in Puerto Vallarta, devouring a pork taco from a cart in Mexico City, playing his songs in a laid-back beach bar in Belize and the wild streets of Colombia, reverently climbing the steep rocky path to mystical ruins atop a great Peruvian mountain. And all of it with Erica, all of it drenched with love and possibility. Hell yes is what he would say.
But even as the travel photographs flashed through his consciousness he could see the other pictures, too, the inevitable flip side of all that freedom. Hustling for drugs, turning to cheaper alternatives when the pills got too expensive, sordid hotel rooms shooting up shit, stealing what they could, selling what they had of spirit and body just to get enough to keep going, keep going, so they could steal more, sell more, and keep going.
It would end badly—everything he touched turned to shit—but still the jolt of it sang to him. Maybe the exhilaration of the first few hours, the first few days or weeks if he were lucky, would make it worth it. That had been his skittering red-shifted life, an exhilarating run leading to disaster. Maybe that was the trade-off he had made with fate, and maybe that was the most he could ever expect for himself, the most anyone could expect.
He closed his eyes and saw the stars of the night before still burning heroically beneath his lids, cold, bright, indifferent, vacant. And then he heard the gruff, ruined voice of the old man talking about loving so hard and still letting go as if it was now coming not from the old man’s scarred throat but from the stars themselves, and when he heard it some living, squirming thing died in Frank’s soul.
“What’s wrong, Frank?” said Erica, his last hope on this damn spinning top. “What’s happening?”
In the old man’s truck just a few hours later, he was still trying to figure it all out: what he had done; what he would do now; how he could get his life back on a track, any damn track but the down-bound one he had been on. They were driving into Colorado Springs, the old man and Ayana and Frank, heading for the bus depot to drop off Ayana—goodbye, Ayana—and then buy some wood and tools and run a few other errands, when Oliver pointed out a cyclist perched atop a black-and-red motorcycle parked on the street across from the transit center. The cycle was big; the cyclist was thin and tall with platinum hair, wearing a red-and-black leather jacket with “V-ROD” spelled across the back.
“Do you see her?” said the old man.
“Uh-oh,” said Ayana.
“What did you do, Ayana?” said the old man as he accelerated the truck past the cyclist and then past the bus station itself. “What the hell did you do?”
As the truck roared forward, Frank’s head spun to take in the rider and this is what the face he spied told him:
Frank Cormack, you lame-legged, pathetic son of a bitch, you’re going to die.
And all he could think, even as fear shot through his heart like a spear, was that it was about fucking time.
34
SURFING SAFARI
Oliver Cross used to lean against the railing on the pier at Fort Point in San Francisco and watch the surfers ride waves beside the rust-colored towers of the bridge. The surfers balanced on their boards like sovereigns of the sea as the ocean’s high glassy walls propelled them forward.
Ever since the epochal events in 1968, Oliver’s life has been all about fighting the current, swimming against the flow, battling complacency and the status quo. The struggle, ah, the struggle. But letting oneself not only accept the flow, but ride it while standing like royalty atop a narrow board, seemed to Oliver like a brilliant act of alchemy. Surrender turning to mastery, submission as a means to power.
He should have bought a cheap board and jumped into the water and paddled out to where the waves rose like unbroken beasts and given it a go when he was still young enough to have had a chance. He should have submitted to the current, time after time, letting the waves overwhelm him, smashing him into the rocky surface of the seafloor over and again, until once, with just a bit of luck and a shocking outbreak of balance, he had ridden one of those monsters and felt the power of the universe working with him instead of against him. For once he might have lived within the flow instead of outside it. For once he might have been a king.
Except the inevitability of repeated failure in front of an audience of snot-nosed kids who had been surfing since they were grade-schoolers had killed any idea of trying it on his own. His self-image was too fragile, his self-consciousness too strong. So he never tried, never failed, never surfed.
Regrets, who will rid him of these meddlesome regrets?
But as soon as he spies the familiar motorcycle in front of the transit center in Colorado Springs and recognizes the platinum-haired rider, he knows the Russian is coming. The Russian is coming. Maybe the son of a bitch is already here. And he is bringing, along with his weapons and lackeys, violence and death. But Oliver isn’t fighting it anymore. He’s not slapping against the current in some desperate attempt to peel himself away from the wave. He’s not hiding, hoping the thing breaks over his head and leaves him whole. Screw that. Whatever is coming, Oliver decides he is going to face it as if he’s on a longboard riding death like a brute wave breaking beneath the Golden Gate.
After passing the motorcyclist, and spotting Madam Bob’s leer, Oliver takes the first right, then the first left, then the first right again, checking all the while the rearview mirror. She had to have spotted the truck, had to, but she isn’t following to see where the truck ends up. She’s at the transit center waiting for someone. And quick as that Oliver knows that the Russian knows everything.
“Let me out,” says Ayana.
“Piss off,” says Oliver as he spins the truck back toward the highway.
“If she’s here, then they’re all here,” says Frank. “They’ve come to kill me.”
“They’re going to try.”
“Where are we going now?” says Ayana.
“We need to get back to the farm,” says Oliver. “We need to pass the word.” He doesn’t say that he fears it may be too late.
“I’ll get out here,” says Ayana.
“Be my guest, but I’m not slowing down,” says Oliver. “No bag, no guitar, just the asphalt making you pay for your betrayal.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“All we have are choices.”
“Remember in Chicago, at that factory place you dragged me to? I didn’t want to call but you made me. Remember that, Oliver, you son of
a bitch? Yeah. Well on the call they made a threat.”
“Boo-hoo.”
“If I didn’t give them Frank they were going to kill my mother. She’s a rat but she’s my mother. And they would have done it, too. You didn’t leave me a choice.”
“But why are they still chasing Frank?” says Oliver. “We made sure they knew he didn’t have the stuff anymore. What else did you take?”
“Nothing,” says Frank.
“The computer,” says Ayana. “He took a computer from Sergei when he bashed his skull.”
“So what?” says Frank. “A stupid MacBook. It was in the bag with the shit.”
“They want it back.”
“Why?” says Oliver. “What’s on it?”
“Something they need,” says Ayana.
“Evidence?” says Oliver.
“A wallet or something.”
“I didn’t know,” says Frank.
“A wallet, huh?” says Oliver with a bitter laugh.
“We’re so screwed,” says Ayana.
“Maybe not, if it’s what I think it is,” says Oliver, veering left onto the entrance ramp. With the window open and the wide white cement of the highway rattling the truck, Oliver can hear the roaring call of the ocean.
Surf’s up, motherfuckers.
When they arrive at the pyramid, Oliver turns at the mailbox and speeds over the ravine while Frank and the girl sit frozen, sullen with fear, each of them expecting the worst. But when they reach the farm, all is calm, all is as if this was just an ordinary day at Seven Suns. Oliver wonders if that’s the way it always is before hell drops in your lap.
He doesn’t park under the juniper but keeps driving, past the parked cars and the lawyer’s rented van, onto the bumpy dirt road that heads into the hills, until he gets to the cabin where Erica and the family are staying. He slams the truck into “Park,” scuttles out of the still rocking vehicle as fast as his bones allow, and storms the cabin.
Empty.
When he steps outside again, he looks around. Frank and Ayana are also out of the truck, searching the emptiness. The birds twitter, the insects buzz, the heavy sun bathes the empty fields as his stomach anxiously contracts. Then he hears a spark of laughter riding on a soft breeze.
“Come with me,” he says.
Oliver finds them at the reservoir. Fletcher is in his old swimming hole, clowning in the water with Oliver’s two granddaughters. Petra is sitting primly on the bank with Prakash, who is in jeans and a T-shirt. Prakash waves cheerfully when he sees Oliver barreling down the path. It’s enough, all of it, to still Oliver’s beating heart. He stops on the path; Frank and Ayana halt, too, standing on either side of him. It is as if the land and the water of this place are wrapping their arms around his family. He wants to call back Helen from whatever hole she disappeared into and show her this. If he could freeze time, right now, freeze time and let this vision soak into his bones, he would.
But time marches, ticktock, and death is on its way. He starts again down the path to relay the terrible news.
There is no time for heartfelt confessions and familial breakthroughs, there is no time to counteract decades of animosity and disappointment. There is no time for a happy ending. There is just time to leave.
“Oliver,” says Petra after the van is packed. Her hair is stiff as wire even as her head shakes. “Oliver.”
“Yeah,” says Oliver, taking a hug because it’s quicker than avoiding it.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “I know you’re not coming home, but wherever you end up, we’ll visit. I promise.”
“Just not too often,” he says before pushing her to the van’s door.
The little girl, still clutching at the urn, turns her head, smiles, and gives a little wave before following her mother into the van. She’s the only one who knows how to do this.
“Come home with us, Dad,” says Fletcher, eyes red behind his glasses.
“Take care of your family,” says Oliver.
“Don’t worry about the parole thing. Prakash has already talked to Jennifer. I’ll talk to her, too.”
“Give her my regards.”
“Maybe I should stay with you. I feel like I should stay.”
“Don’t be a fool.”
“Why do you always make me feel guilty?”
“It’s my gift.”
Fletcher turns and looks at his daughter, standing off, talking to Frank, and Oliver turns with him. “I told her she had to come with us. No choice.”
“I’m sure that worked well,” says Oliver.
“I didn’t know what else to do.”
“My father tried to browbeat me, and I tried to browbeat you. Fat good it did either of us.”
“So I’m part of a long tradition of failed Cross fathers.”
“My grandfather voted for Eugene Debs.”
They stand there for a moment, watching the discussion between Erica and Frank play out. There are hesitations, there is anger, Frank says something and Erica whips out a response, and then Frank starts singing something, too low for them to hear. They talk more before Frank turns away and Erica, with tears in her eyes, heads toward them.
She looks at Fletcher and says not a word before spinning around to face Oliver. She leans forward until her forehead rests on Oliver’s chest. Fletcher nods at Oliver before heading off to stand by the van door, giving them a moment alone.
Erica stays quiet for a couple heartbeats before she says, “He won’t let me help him.”
“Maybe he’s helping you.”
“To do what?”
“Whatever.”
“I’m not ready to go home.”
“Just get away from here. Promise me you’ll get away.”
“I promise.”
“Good. Go.”
“Say hi to Grandmom for me,” she says. As she passes Fletcher on her way into the van, Fletcher gives Oliver a look, a helpless, thankful look, a look that suddenly reminds the father of his own emotions so many years ago, before Fletcher follows his daughter inside.
“It was a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Cross,” says Prakash. “Especially in more convivial circumstances.”
“What’s wrong with the University Club?”
“Don’t get me started, I might surprise.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Oliver looks up and sees Ayana standing hesitantly off to the side, her bag and guitar on the ground beside her. “Ayana, get in the fucking van.”
“Maybe I’ll go with Frank,” she says.
“Don’t be stupid,” says Oliver. “Get in the van.”
“Piss off, Oliver.”
He looks at Prakash and smiles. “Our time together wasn’t a total waste.”
“They’re not going to stop chasing him,” she says.
“Oh, I think they will, one way or the other. But no matter what happens, it will be better for you and your mother if you’re not involved. Mr. Prakash will take you wherever you want to go.”
She hesitates before picking up her bags and heading for the van. “Anywhere that’s not here.”
“Good motto.”
She goes to the rear of the van and throws in her bags. Then she slams it shut. On the way to the door she stops in front of him for a moment.
“I’m sorry.”
“That and a quarter will get you a cup of coffee.”
She laughs. “What century are you living in? You know, Oliver, you could be a halfway decent human being if you ever let yourself try.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“See you on the far side,” she says, before she climbs in.
Still looking inside the van, Oliver says, “How is the real estate purchase going?”
“We offered,” says Prakash. “They countered. We laughed. They sulked. It’s as good as done.”
“You’ll take Ayana back to Chicago with you.”
“Whatever she wants.”
“Convince her. Tell her I’m buying the house. Tell her she can live
rent free as caretaker and also get a piece of the rent in salary.”
“How generous a piece?”
“Up to you. But a room of her own, enough to eat, and medical insurance is what anyone deserves. Make sure she has it all. And keep your eye on her.”
“Of course.”
“There’s something there, more than she knows. It’ll turn to crap, it always does, but still.”
“I’ll do my best for her.”
“Drive carefully.”
“And fast.”
“Yes,” says Oliver, “and fast. Now get the hell out of here.”
He watches the van as it backs up, turns around, heads off along the long, overgrown road. When it disappears from his view, he turns and watches Frank stare down the selfsame road, his eyes red, his hands trembling.
“Well that’s that,” says Frank, wiping his nose with a sleeve-tattooed forearm.
“Yep,” says Oliver. “You got a password to open the laptop you stole?”
“Putinrocks293.”
“Good. Now get the fucking computer and follow me.”
“Where we taking it?”
“To Crazy Bob,” says Oliver.
35
HURT
Frank Cormack’s life had finally hit rock bottom, there was no denying it, and when someone like Frank hit rock bottom, it was not like a fall from great heights where Icarus McMoneybags ended up in some springy little rehab on the coast with ocean views and daily massages from Sven. Hell no, rock bottom for someone like Frank Cormack was low, baby, lower than low. Falling out of the shit into the Shinola. And it wasn’t the drugs that sent him down this time, or the perpetual lack of cash, it wasn’t his audacity or stupidity, though he had both in abundance, and it wasn’t his usual desperate need to do something, anything to clear the murk of his life. No, what finally toppled Frank into the lower depths was the vile spark of decency.
Where the hell had that come from?
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